Before you read on, just pause for a moment. Let your eyes soften. Notice the weight of your body wherever you are sitting or lying. There is nothing you need to fix right now. Just this breath. Just this moment.
Just down the road from where I live there is a camellia bush. All winter I was fairly sure it had given up. Brown leaves. No movement. Just sitting there looking done.
And then, last week, a bud. Just one. Tight and closed and not making any fuss about it. But unmistakably alive.
I did not do anything to make that happen. I did not motivate the bush. I ignored it until I noticed it. Because that is what life does when the conditions are right and nobody is standing in its way.
I think we do this too. Not on command. Not on schedule. But quietly, when we stop insisting on it. Energy comes back. Curiosity returns. The tenderness we thought we had lost turns out to have been resting, not gone.
This rhythm is everywhere. A wave rises, crests, falls. And if you are watching just one wave, you might think it is gone. But another comes. And another. The ocean does not run out of waves. And we are not separate from that rhythm. We are that rhythm.
The trouble comes when we get attached to the crest. When we think the high point is the real us and the low point is the broken us. But fading is not the same as dying. It is just the other half of the wave.
And if you are in a low point right now, I want to say this as clearly as I can. You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not failing to rise on schedule. The seed does not bloom because someone stands over it and says hurry up, it is spring. It blooms when it is ready. When the warmth has reached deep enough.
Spring is just beginner's mind made visible. Everything arriving fresh, as if for the first time.
Pay attention to what is rising. Not what you think should be happening. Not the transformation you are trying to force. Just what is actually, quietly, beginning to show itself.
Maybe it is energy. Maybe it is curiosity. Maybe it is the willingness to try something you had given up on. Maybe it is just a morning where you feel, for no clear reason, slightly more alive than you did yesterday.
That is the bud. Do not pull it open. Just notice it.
What is one thing in your life that you were sure was over, but turned out to be resting?
This week, I will pay attention to what is rising, without forcing it.
New meditation: Find the Green Shoot: A Meditation for Quiet Renewal - A quiet, guided practice to sit with what is returning in you. No effort required.Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
New Podcast Episode 162: What Rises When You Stop Pushing - We talk about renewal, dormancy, and why the thing you thought was finished might just be the middle.Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
I came home from hospital about a week ago. And without making this whole newsletter about that, I will say this. When you spend time in a hospital bed, the question of what rises becomes very literal. Your energy goes. Your independence goes. Your sense of yourself as someone who can just get on with things, that goes too.
And then, slowly, it comes back. Not all at once. Not on your schedule. But it comes back. A morning where the dread is not there. An afternoon where you catch yourself laughing and think, oh. There you are.
I think Easter is about that, whatever your relationship with the story. The thing you thought was finished might just be the middle. Not the end. The middle. With more still to come that you cannot see yet.
Be gentle with yourself this week.
Let something ordinary take your breath away.
Much love, Steven
With gratitude to
Thank you to everyone who supported me with a coffee recently:Rosie, Griet, Sujata, SadieO, Rochelle, Helen, Audra, Laura, Jack. It means more than you know. And I know I've missed some people. If I have, I really apologise. And also many that donate on Insight Timer. I'm waiting for confirmation that I can thank them publicly.
If you would like to support, listen to the podcast, or just say hello: stevenwebb.uk